Healthline Blogs

Diet and MS: Part 1

One of the most frustrating features of
MS is that it is an illness over which people feel they have little to no
control. The illness develops for no apparent reason, and relapses tend to
occur at random, unpredictable intervals. It is natural for patients in this
situation to do anything they can that will give them a sense of control over
their illness. One of the most common and understandable ways that people do
this is by changing their diet. It seems intuitively obvious that improving one’s
diet would lead to improvement in every aspect in one’s health, including MS. After
all, “you are what you eat.”

Probably the most famous proponent of a
dietary treatment for MS was Dr. Roy Swank. He proposed a dietary regimen low
in saturated fat as the core feature of his suggested plan, The Swank diet, which
recommends:

No red meat for one year—and only minimal amounts afterward.

Saturated fat should be less than 15 grams per day;
unsaturated fats should be 20-50 grams per day. Processed food should not
contain saturated fat.

Dairy products should contain one percent or less fat.

Omega-3 in the form of fish oils are suggested as well
as vitamin and mineral supplements.

Dr. Swank published his results in 1990
in the medical journal The Lancet,
one of the most prestigious journals in the United States. In this study, 144 patients took a low-fat
diet for 34 years. Dr. Swank found that
“For each of three categories of neurological disability (minimum, moderate,
severe) patients who adhered to the prescribed diet (less than or equal to 20 g fat/day) showed
significantly less deterioration and much lower death rates than did those who
consumed more fat than prescribed (greater than 20 g fat/day).”

So what does one make of these results?
They certainly sound impressive. Should every patient with MS radically change
their diet as a result of this study? Most neurologists would say “no,” as the
study suffered from several design flaws. In my next post, I will explore what I believe to be some potential
problems with studies of diet and MS.

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